Harvard Library acquires copy of ‘Green Book’

Black travelers often struggled to find hotels, restaurants, and other needed services during the Jim Crow era of segregation. So that they might “travel without embarrassment,” New York City postal carrier Victor H. Green created a tour book in 1936 for African Americans on the road.

“The Negro Motorist Green Book,” its pages filled with addresses of businesses friendly to Black travelers, became an invaluable annual guide during its nearly 30 years of publication. The Green Book was not widely known outside of African American communities, and it faded from view after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination in public accommodations.

There has been a resurgence of interest in the guide in recent decades, owing in part to the growth in academic attention to the history of African Americans in the 20th century as well as the 2018 eponymous feature film and 2019 documentary. Original copies of the book have become hard to find.

The Harvard Library acquired in March a 1949 international edition, which includes Canada and Mexico, said Leslie Morris, Gore Vidal Curator of Modern Books and Manuscripts at Houghton Library, Harvard’s rare books and manuscripts, literary and performing arts archives.

The purchase is part of an effort to diversify the library collections, said Morris. When Houghton Library was inaugurated in 1942, a travel guide for Black Americans was not considered a collectible item, she said.

“While Harvard may be the largest university in the world, it collected certain things to support teaching and research, but this was not something that anyone thought was important,” said Morris. “But in the context of the 20th and 21st century, when we’re trying to document more deeply the Black experience, this is really an important document for our library. One of our priorities has been to diversify the collection and try to remediate some oversights that our predecessors made.”

While The New York Public Library has the most complete collection of “The Green Book” in the country, original editions are scarce, said Morris.

Earlier this year, Henry Louis “Skip” Gates Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, alerted Morris of an upcoming auction featuring a 1949 edition of “The Green Book.” She submitted a bid.

The library bought the 80-page guide from a Manhattan-based auctioneer for $50,000, which included a buyer’s premium.

It was worth it, Morris said.

“‘The Green Book’ was one of those things that I didn’t think was likely to come up anytime in the near future,” she said. “We work closely with faculty, and Skip Gates has been a wonderful partner. He is not only knowledgeable, but everybody knows him. For both teaching purposes and exhibition purposes, I did feel it was important that we have an example of ‘The Green Book’ because it really is a key document in Black history.”

“‘The Green Book’ was a lifesaving guide for Black Americans,” said Candacy Taylor, author of “Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America” (2020). “It is an important document of the Jim Crow era: a Black Yellow Pages for people to get their hair done, where to buy medicine, spend the night or eat out. It also speaks to the entrepreneurship, resilience, and courage of Black business owners and that of Black travelers, who with their travels helped shape the culture of this country.”

The guide is a “symbol of Jim Crow America” and a “stunning rebuke of it, born out of ingenuity and the relentless quest for freedom,” wrote Gates in his blurb of Taylor’s book, which she worked on while a Hutchins Center fellow in 2017.

The 1949 edition includes a chapter dedicated to Massachusetts, listing nearly 50 businesses open to Black travelers in Boston, including three hotels, nine restaurants, 21 beauty parlors, two barber shops, six tailors, and one night club — Savoy on 410 Massachusetts Ave.

Many of the businesses were located on Columbus Avenue and Tremont Street; among them were restaurants such as Loonie Lee’s, Sunnyside, and Green Candle; and “tourist homes,” informal hotels, with the names of “Mrs. Williams,” “Julia Walters,” and “M. Johnson.”

The book served a clear and necessary purpose in its time, but its editors looked forward to the day when it would no longer be needed.

“There will be a day sometime when this guide will not have to be published,” they wrote. “That is when we as a race will have equal opportunities and privileges in the United States. It will be a great day for us to suspend this publication for then we can go wherever we please, and without embarrassment. But until that time comes, we shall continue to publish this information for your convenience each year.”

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